According to tradition, these places of refuge were so surrounded by an atmosphere of reverence that it even affected animals. Thus Aymoin relates that a stag, hunted by King Dagobert, having taken refuge beside the tomb of Saint-Denis, the hounds stopped the chase and stood barking.
The churches usually had a cell set apart for these refugees. In 1407, Nicolas Flamel had one built in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie which cost him four livres, six sous, sixteen deniers parisis.
In Notre-Dame it was a cell constructed over one of the side aisles, under the buttresses and facing towards the cloister, exactly on the spot where the wife of the present concierge of the towers has made herself a garden— which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon as a lettuce to a palm tree, as a portress to Semiramis.
There it was that, after his frantic and triumphant course round the towers and galleries, Quasimodo had deposited Esmeralda. So long as the course had lasted the girl had remained almost unconscious, having only a vague perception that she was rising in the air— that she was floating— flying— being borne upward away from the earth. Ever and anon she heard the wild laugh, the raucous voice of Quasimodo in her ear: she half opened her eyes and saw beneath her confusedly the thousand roofs of Paris, tile and slate like a red and blue mosaic— and above her head Quasimodo’s frightful and jubilant face. Then her eye-lids closed; she believed that all was finished. that she had been executed during her swoon, and that the hideous genio who had ruled her destiny had resumed possession of her soul and was bearing it away. She dared not look at him, but resigned herself utterly.
But when the bell-ringer, panting and dishevelled, had deposited her in the cell of refuge, when she felt his great hands gently untying the cords that cut her arms, she experienced that shock which startles out of their sleep the passengers of a vessel that strikes on a rock in the middle of a dark night. So were her thoughts awakened, and her senses returned to her one by one. She perceived that she was in Notre-Dame, she remembered that she had been snatched from the hands of the executioner, that Ph?bus was living, and that Ph?bus loved her no more; and these last two thoughts— the one so sweet, the other so bitter— presenting themselves simultaneously to the poor creature, she turned to Quasimodo, who still stood before her, filling her with terror, and said:
“Why did you save me?”
He looked at her anxiously, striving to divine her words. She repeated her question, at which he gave her another look of profound sadness, and, to her amazement, hastened away.
In a few minutes he returned, carrying a bundle which he threw at her feet. It was some wearing apparel deposited for her by some charitable women. At this she cast down her eyes over her person, saw that she was nearly naked, and blushed. Life was coming back to her.
Quasimodo seemed to feel something of this modest shame. He veiled his eye with his broad hand and left her once more, but this time with reluctant steps.
She hastened to clothe herself in the white robe and the white veil supplied to her. It was the habit of a novice of the H?tel-Dieu.
She had scarcely finished when she saw Quasimodo returning, carrying a basket under one arm and a mattress under the other. The basket contained a bottle and bread and a few other provisions. He set the basket on the ground and said, “Eat.” He spread the mattress on the stone floor — “Sleep,” he said.
It was his own food, his own bed, that the poor bell-ringer had been to fetch.
The gipsy raised her eyes to him to thank him, but she could not bring herself to utter a word. The poor devil was in truth too frightful. She dropped her head with a shudder.
“I frighten you,” said he. “I am very ugly I know. Do not look upon me. Listen to what I have to say. In the daytime you must remain here, but at night you may go where you will about the church. But go not one step outside the church by day or night. You would be lost. They would kill you, and I should die.”
Touched by his words, she raised her head to answer him. He had disappeared. She found herself alone, musing upon the strange words of this almost monster and struck by the tone of his voice — so harsh, and yet so gentle.
She presently examined her cell. It was a chamber some six feet square, with a small window and a door following the slight incline of the roofing of flat stones outside. Several gargoyles with animal heads seemed bending down and stretching their necks to look in at her window. Beyond the roof she caught a glimpse of a thousand chimney–tops from which rose the smoke of the many hearths of Paris — a sad sight to the poor gipsy — a foundling, under sentence of death, an unhappy outcast without country, or kindred, or home!
At the moment when the thought of her friendless plight assailed her more poignantly than ever before, she was startled — everything frightened her now — by a shaggy, bearded head rubbing against her knees. It was the poor little goat, the nimble Djali, which had made its escape and followed her at the moment when Quasimodo scattered Charmolue’s men, and had been lavishing its caresses in vain at her feet for nearly an hour without obtaining a single glance from her. Its mistress covered it with kisses.
“Oh, Djali!”she exclaimed, “how could I have forgotten thee thus? And dost thou still love me? Oh, thou — thou art not ungrateful!”
And then, as if some invisible hand had lifted the weight which had lain so long upon her heart and kept back her tears, she began to weep, and as the tears flowed all that was harshest and most bitter in her grief and pain was washed away.
When night fell she found the air so sweet, the moonlight so soothing, that she ventured to make the round of the high gallery that surrounds the church; and it brought her some relief, so calm and distant did earth seem to her from that height.
Chapter 3 - Deaf
On waking the next morning, she discovered to her surprise that she had slept — poor girl, she had so long been a stranger to sleep. A cheerful ray from the rising sun streamed through her window and fell upon her face. But with the sun something else looked in at her window that frightened her — the unfortunate countenance of Quasimodo. Involuntarily she closed her eyes to shut out the sight, but in vain; she still seemed to see through her rosy eye–lids that goblin face — one–eyed, broken–toothed, mask–like. Then, while she continued to keep her eyes shut, she heard a grating voice say in gentlest accents:
“Be not afraid. I am a friend. I did but come to watch you sleeping. That cannot hurt you, can it, that I should come and look at you asleep? What can it matter to you if I am here so long as your eyes are shut? Now I will go. There, I am behind the wall — you may open your eyes again.”
There was something more plaintive still than his words, and that was the tone in which they were spoken. Much touched, the gipsy opened her eyes. It was true, he was no longer at the window. She ran to it and saw the poor hunchback crouching against a corner of the wall in an attitude of sorrow and resignation. Overcoming with an effort the repulsion he inspired in her, “Come back,”she said softly. From the movement of her lips, Quasimodo understood that she was driving him away; he therefore rose and hobbled off slowly, with hanging head, not venturing to lift even his despairing glance to the girl.
“Come hither!”she called, but he kept on his way. At this she hastened out of the cell, ran after him, and put her hand on his arm. At her touch Quasimodo thrilled from head to foot. He lifted a suppliant eye, and perceiving that she was drawing him towards her, his whole face lit up with tenderness and delight. She would have had him enter her cell, but he remained firmly on the threshold. “No, no,”said he; “the owl goes not into the nest of the lark.”
She proceeded, therefore, to nestle down prettily on her couch, with the goat asleep at her feet, and both remained thus for some time motionless, gazing in silence — he at so much beauty, she at so much ugliness. Each moment revealed to her some fresh deformity. Her eyes wandered from the bowed knees to the humped back, from the humped back to the cyclops eye. She could not imagine how so misshapen a being could carry on existence. And yet there was diffused over the whole such an air of melancholy and gentleness that she began to be reconciled to it.
He was the first to break the silence.
“You were telling me to come back?”
She nodded in affirmation and said, “Yes.”
He understood the motion of her head. “Alas!”he said, and hesitated as if reluctant to finish the sentence; “you see, I am deaf.”
“Poor soul!”exclaimed the gipsy with a look of kindly pity.
He smiled sorrowfully. “Ah! you think I was bad enough without that? Yes, I am deaf. That is the way I am made! ’Tis horrible, in truth. And you — you are so beautiful.”
In the poor creature’s tone there was so profound a consciousness of his pitiable state, that she had not the resolution to utter a word of comfort. Besides, he would not have heard it. He continued:
“Never did I realize my deformity as I do now. When I compare myself with you, I do indeed pity myself — poor unhappy monster that I am! Confess — I look to you like some terrible beast? You — you are like a sunbeam, a drop of dew, the song of a bird! While I am something fearsome — neither man nor beast — a something that is harder, more trodden underfoot, more unsightly than a stone by the wayside!”And he laughed — the most heart–rending kind of laughter in all the world.
“Yes, I am deaf,”he went on. “But you can speak to me by signs and gestures. I have a master who talks to me in that manner. And then I shall soon know your will by the motion of your lips and by your face.”
“Well, then,”she said, smiling, “tell me why you saved me.”
He looked at her attentively while she spoke.
“I understood,”he replied, “you were asking why I saved you. You have forgotten a poor wretch who tried to carry you off one night — a wretch to whom, next day, you brought relief on the shameful pillory. A drop of water — a little pity — that is more than my whole life could repay. You have forgotten — he remembers.”
She listened to him with profound emotion. A tear rose to the bell–ringer’s eye, but it did not fall; he seemed to make it a point of honour that it should not fall.
“Listen,”he said, when he had regained control over himself. “We have very high towers here; a man, if he fell from one, would be dead before he reached the ground. If ever you desire me to throw myself down, you have but to say the word — a glance will suffice.”
He turned to go. Unhappy as the gipsy girl herself was, this grotesque creature awakened some compassion in her. She signed to him to remain.
“No, no,”he returned, “I may not stay here too long. I am not at my ease while you look at me. It is only from pity that you do not turn away your eyes. I will go to a spot where I can see you without being seen in my turn. It will be better.”
He drew from his pocket a little metal whistle.
“Here,”he said, “when you have need of me, when you wish me to come, when you are not too disgusted to look at me, then sound this whistle; I can hear that.”
He laid the whistle on the floor and hastened away.
Chapter 4 - Earthenware and Crystal
The days succeeded one another.
Little by little tranquility returned to Esmeralda’s spirits. Excess of suffering, like excess of joy, is a condition too violent to last. The human heart is incapable of remaining long in any extreme. The gipsy had endured such agonies that her only remaining emotion at its recollection was amazement.
With the feeling of security hope returned to her. She was outside the pale of society, of life; but she had a vague sense that it was not wholly impossible that she should re–enter it — as if dead but having in reserve a key to open her tomb.
The terrible images that had so long haunted her withdrew by degrees. All the grewsome phantoms — Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, and the rest, even the priest himself — faded from her mind.
And then — Ph?bus was living; she was sure of it, she had seen him.
The fact of Ph?bus being alive was all in all to her. After the series of earthquake shocks that had overturned everything, left no stone standing on another in her soul, one feeling alone had stood fast, and that was her love for the soldier. For love is like a tree; it grows of itself, strikes its roots deep into our being, and often continues to flourish and keep green over a heart in ruins.
And the inexplicable part of it is, that the blinder this passion the more tenacious is it. It is never more firmly seated than when it has no sort of reason.
Assuredly Esmeralda could not think of the captain without pain. Assuredly it was dreadful that he too should have been deceived, should have believed it possible that the dagger–thrust had been dealt by her who would have given a thousand lives for him. And yet he was not so much to blame, for had she not confessed her crime? Had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to the torture? The fault was hers, and hers alone. She ought rather to have let them tear the nails from her feet than such an avowal from her lips. Still, could she but see Ph?bus once again, for a single minute, it needed but a word, a look, to undeceive him, to bring him back to her. She did not doubt it for a moment. She closed her eyes to the meaning of various singular things, or put a plausible construction on them: the chance presence of Ph?bus on the day of her penance, the lady who stood beside him — his sister, no doubt. The explanation was most unlikely, but she contented herself with it because she wished to believe that Ph?bus still loved her, and her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? And what more did she need — simple and credulous creature that she was? Besides, throughout the whole affair, were not appearances far more strongly against her than against him? So she waited — she hoped.
Added to this, the church itself, the vast edifice wrapping her round on all sides, protecting, saving her, was a sovereign balm. The solemn lines of its architecture, the religious attitude of all the objects by which the girl was surrounded, the serene and pious thoughts that breathed, so to speak, from every pore of these venerable stones, acted upon her unceasingly. Sounds arose from it, too, of such blessedness and such majesty that they soothed that tortured spirit. The monotonous chants of the priests and the responses of the people — sometimes an inarticulate murmur, sometimes a roll of thunder; the harmonious trembling of the windows, the blast of the organ like a hive of enormous bees, that entire orchestra with its gigantic gamut ascending and descending incessantly — from the voice of the multitude to that of a single bell — deadened her memory, her imagination, her pain. The bells in especial lulled her. A potent magnetism flowed from the vast metal domes and rocked her on its waves.
